News 2009

Announcement on ASO candidates for ICAAN seats

Dear Colleagues,

Following a public nomination period that closed on 22 February 2009, the ASO Address Council (ASO AC) selected the final set of candidates to fill the ASO seat on the ICANN Board. This seat is currently held by Dave Wodelet, whose term expires in May 2009. The candidates are: - Jody Daniel Newman - Ray Plzak - Jordi Palet Martinez - Rajesh Chharia - Suzanne Woolf - Barry Shein The candidates listed above agree to serve in an ASO seat on the ICANN Board of Directors if selected by the ASO Address Council. In April 2009, the ASO AC will make its final selection to appoint one of these individuals to fill the ASO Board seat. To aid them in making their final selection, the ASO AC members request public comments and statements of support for the candidates. The public comment period will remain open until 23:59 (UTC) on 9 April 2009. You can provide your comments and statements of support for the candidates on the aso-announce mailing list. These will be publicly archived at: http://www.aso.icann.org/lists Alternatively, if you would prefer not to subscribe to that mailing list, you may submit your comments directly to the ASO AC Nominations Committee by sending an email to . A digest of all comments sent to the mailing list or received by the Nominations Committee will be published on the ASO web site at: http://www.aso.icann.org/elections Best regards, Axel Pawlik Managing Director RIPE NCC On behalf of the ASO/NRO Secretariat.

AfriNIC to benefit from ISOC, AfriNIC infrastructure project

The Internet Society (ISOC) and AfriNIC (African Network Information Center) have rolled out a collaborative project seeking to strengthen Internet infrastructure on the continent.

The only way to maintain electronic commerce in the continent is by strengthening the infrastructure, said Adiel Akplogan, AfriNIC CEO. "People will resort to local infrastructure once we demonstrate we can perform at the same level with the developed countries," Akplogan said.

The project will help countries establish national Internet eXchange Points (IXPs) where service providers can peer. Up to now access has been routed through Europe or the U.S. The second phase is setting up copies of the DNS (Domain Name System) root servers, which allow faster access to Web sites and pages.

"If a country is to enjoy the benefits of local content, it is important to have a functional IXP and a copy of the root server," said Michuki Mwangi, a senior education manager at ISOC.

A root server maps IP addresses. If the address map resides within the country, then it becomes faster to access the Web site.

The first phase of the project was a workshop where IXP operators without copies of the root server were asked to express interest. The project is also supporting countries without IXPs to set them up.

Tanzania and Mozambique will get a copy of the root zone server, Mali will get technical support of a fully operational IXPs and Sierra Leone will set up an IXP.

"A local copy of the DNS root server will provide resilience against an outage of a major international circuit. Waiting/response time will be improved from the current 600ms," said Frank Habicht, manager of Tanzania's IXP.

Tanzania has two exchange points and Habicht feels that it has helped online application form processing for customs inspection clearance and online applications to the Tanzania Revenue Authority.

"Companies are now relying on the IXP for business-to-business Virtual Private Networks," Habicht added. "New business opportunities for local content hosting have also come up."

The infrastructure has to be in place for local content to yield results, Michuki said.

The Kenya IXP grew by 384 percent last year, a factor Michuki attributes to awareness of the value of local content.

The true value of the IXPs has not been appreciated in Africa because the cost of connectivity has remained high. With fiber-optic connections finally coming to Kenya, Michuki predicted that low-cost bandwidth will become reality.

Sierra Leone, which is rebuilding after the civil war, received a grant of US$10,000 to set up the necessary framework and train engineers, added Michuki. Cisco Systems is providing additional switches to connect the local university.

AfriNIC-10 Press release

New Board Members elected during AfriNIC-10

Dear Colleagues,

AfriNIC is pleased to announce the results of the Board Elections that took place on 21 May 2009 during the AfriNIC-10 Public Policy Meeting. The following candidates were elected to the AfriNIC Board:

It was a moment of immense pride and pleasure for AfriNIC to have its CEO, Mr. Adiel A. Akplogan receive the first Network Information Infrastructure (NII) Service Award for 2009 by the African Network Operators Group (AfNOG) for his contribution in establishing the very successful African Internet Numbers Registry, AfriNIC, and for his leadership and service to the African technical community.

The Award was presented during the AfNOG 10th Anniversary meeting that was jointly held with the AfriNIC-10 Public Policy Meeting in Cairo, Egypt, 10-21 May 2009.

Mr. Akplogan is playing an exemplary role for Internet development in the African Region. He continues to provide leadership in the numbers registry and has been a strong African voice in several global technical forums. "Adiel Akplogan has selflessly worked to establish AfriNIC and worked tirelessly to grow the membership, improve use of number resources and built an active technical community in Africa. This has resulted in the growth of a more robust Internet in Africa and development of an active technical community of LIRs who continue to develop policies appropriate for the region. This has enabled development of numerous applications throughout Africa that is impacting education, health and commerce in a notable way" said Dr. Nii Quaynor, Convenor of AfNOG. "While many people were talking, he was leading his small team to just do it" he added.

In his address, Adiel Akplogan thanked the AfNOG for this recognition and dedicated its Award to the community as without their support, none of the success being celebrated could happen. "We have a lot to do in our region, our generation has the obligation to make thing move! If we don`t, the coming will blame us and we will have no argument. The Internet is a tool for development, but without understanding the economics behind it and the fundamentals of the technology, this tool will be useless in our quest for a better life." said Adiel Akplogan.

Other honorees were AfNOG instructors who contributed significantly to the community include Alain Aina, Alan Barrett, Ayitey Bulley, Sunday Folayan, Mark Tinka, Chris Pinkham and Randy Bush. A special award was also given to the Honorable Tarek Kamel, Minister of Communications and Information Technology of Egypt who had been a long time contributor in the technical community in Africa and who generously hosted this event, and to Dr. Nii N. Quaynor for his significant contributions to the development of the Internet in Africa and the global technical community as early adopter and precursors in many Internet related activities and businesses in the region.

Adiel A. Akplogan is the Chief Executive Officer of AfriNIC, the Regional Internet Resource Registry for Africa since 2004. He carries an enriching experience of more than 15 years in the Internet Technology environment. He previously worked at CAFENet (an IT service company based in Togo - 1994-2000) as New Technology Director, and Symbol Technologies in France (2001-2003) as Information System Manager. From 2006-2009, he served as member of the UN Secretary General Multi-stakeholder Advisors Group for the Internet Governance Forum, and since 1999 he served as Experts on Internet Governance for the Organisation Internationale de la Francophonie (OIF).

Moreover, from 2005-2006 he served in the African Technical Advisory Committee of the United Nation Economic Commission for Africa (ATAC/UNECA). Currently, Mr. Akplogan is the Chair of the NRO Executive Council (Number Resource Organization) and was involved with setting up several technical coordination bodies, such as the African Network Operators Group (AfNOG) where he serves as a member of the Administrative committee and the African ccTLD Managers Association (AfTLD). Mr. Akplogan is an Electrical Engineer and holds a M.Sc. in E-Business and New Technology Management.

AfriNIC the Regional Registry for Internet Number Resources for Africa is a non-government, not-for-profit, membership-based organization, headquartered in Mauritius (with operation centre in Egypt and South Africa) to manage Internet Number for Africa.

The event was opened by a Keynote Address from Mr. Mahmoud El Gowini, Advisor to Honourable Dr. Tarek Kamel, Minister of Communications and Information Technology and was comprised of training workshops; presentations on the latest Internet technology trends referenced by interesting case studies; overviews and updates from AfriNIC and the other Regional Internet Registries (RIRs); Policy Discussions; AfriNIC Board Elections; and, closed with a social dinner at the Smart Village which was also hosted by the MCIT where the delegates were privileged by the presence and speech from the Honourable Dr. Tarek Kamel.

One major outcome of the meeting was the approval of the Global Policy Proposal for the Allocation of IPv4 Blocks to Regional Internet Registries (RIRs). In line with the AfriNIC Policy Development Process (PDP), the policy proposal is now in the 15-day last call for comments period. However, the IPv4 Soft Landing and the IPv6 Allocations to Non-Profit Networks policies did not reach consensus during the meeting and were therefore sent back to the RPD mailing list for further discussion. More information on the policy proposals can be found at: http://www.afrinic.net/docs/policies/afpol-v4gb200903.htm and to learn more about the AfriNIC PDP, please visit http://www.afrinic.net/docs/policies/afpol-pdp200707.htm

Delegates also had the opportunity to participate in IPv6/LIR workshops and hear presentations from Industry leaders on subjects including the Legal Aspects of IPv6; Egypt IPv6 Task Force; Economics and Technical aspects of Internet Exchange Points (IXPs); updates from ICANN and IANA, discussions on the importance of participating in the policy development process; and, updates on the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) 2009, which we are proud to say will be held in the African Region in Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt, 15-18 Nov 2009.

AfriNIC Board Elections also took place on 21 May 2009 and the candidates elected to AfriNIC Board are: Southern African Region: Mark J. Elkins (of South Africa): Primary; Silvio Almada (of Angola): Alternate; (2) Eastern African Region: John Walubengo (of Kenya): Primary, Lillian Wambui Karanja (of Kenya): Alternate. The term of the newly elected Board members start on 01 July 2009 and for a three-year period.

AfriNIC Public Policy meetings are open to anyone and are particularly relevant to members, ISPs, the Internet community, academia, governments and regulators. Participation in these meetings will give you tremendous opportunities to upgrade your business, increase your knowledge on Internet related issues, make valuable contacts for building business relationships, and to have your say in policies that affect future development of the Internet in your region. We are pleased to announce that the AfriNIC 11th Public Policy meeting will be held in Dakar, Senegal from 28th Nov to 4th Dec. 2009 and would like to extend a warm invitation to the community to attend and participate. Please visit our website for additional information.

AfriNIC the Regional Registry for Internet Number Resources for Africa is a non-government, not-for-profit, membership-based organization, headquartered in Mauritius (with operation centre in Egypt and South Africa) to manage Internet Number for Africa.

AfriNIC launched its Root Server Anycast Copy Program in Cairo, Egypt, October 2008, with the objective of increasing the number of instances of Anycast copies of root servers in the African region in order to improve the local Internet infrastructure scalability and reliability. Three fundamental reasons have encouraged the distribution of the root servers at many locations around the world.

Better load management on root servers;

Resilience to DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) attacks; and,

Lower RTT (Round Trip {delay} Time) between clients and servers.

When a region or a country loses its international connectivity, access to root servers is preserved by virtue of the local node. This enables the local traffic developed through IXPs and transit points to proceed. In another term, this will allow the local Internet to continue to be able to resolve names and access to local services.

Today, we are pleased to inform you that the first deployment under our program was completed on Wednesday, August 19, 2009 in Dar-es-Salaam at the Tanzania Internet Exchange (TIX), where a copy of the K root server operated by RIPE NCC is installed and running. " This is another exciting step we are taking to improve Internet service in Tanzania. We want to thank AfriNIC and RIPE NCC for their support in this project " stated Frank Habicht, TIX Manager.

"This deployment is very critical as it helps to address the issue of "Access" in Tanzania and it is an important milestone towards our objective to contribute more to the Internet infrastructure development in our region. We are looking forward to more deployments of this kind in the coming months" stated Adiel Akplogan, CEO, AfriNIC.

AfriNIC, the Regional Internet Registry for Africa, is a non-government, not-for-profit, membership based organization, headquartered in Mauritius, and is responsible for the management and distribution of Internet Number Resources throughout the African continent.

[20/09/09] Call for Hosting of AfNOG-11/AfriNIC-12

AfriNIC is hereby seeking potential organisations that would be willing to host the AfNOG 11/AfriNIC 12 Public Policy Meeting. The tentative date for AfNOG 11/AfriNIC-12 is from 23 May to 4 June 2010.

Interested parties will find more information regarding the hosting requirements below where the Call for Proposal and Budget information is available.